No Choice in the Matter
by alliwantistobreathe
Summary: Thomas and Sybil discuss the nature of friendship in light of his recent fall from grace. /AU Sybil Lives - Everything's more or less the same, but Sybil's alive and so that alters the background details slightly. Thomas has just been outed in this universe too.


He can't get a job in service without a proper reference from his old position, so he takes the first offer he gets, working as a barkeep in York. The publican's wife takes a liking to him so he ends up working plenty of shifts to live on, but he can't shake the thought that he always dreamed he'd be someplace else by this age. Someplace better.

It's half past ten in the morning when she strolls in, baby on her hip, like she's any other regular. But Sybil is years past feeling uncomfortable in such situations, and anyway the pub's deserted. He tries not to look up, and studiously continues to polish the bar.

"I don't suppose you'll be wanting a drink, Nurse?" he says. She smiles.

"No, Sergeant, but I am feeling rather peckish if you've got anything." He shakes his head.

"Not unless you want cold porridge from my breakfast." Sybil settles her still slightly swollen body into an empty seat.

"Well, tea it'll have to be then," she says, staring him down. Thomas grunts, and reluctantly drops his cloth to put the kettle on. But Sybil leaps up instead.

"Oh, no," she says quickly, "do let me." She abruptly passes the gurgling baby over the bar and right into his unprepared arms. Very quickly he registers two things: first, she seems to be trying to prove to him that she can, in fact, make a proper cup of tea, and second, that she trusts him enough, despite what she must know if she's here, to drop her child into his arms with barely a thought.

Sybil makes a splatter filling the kettle ("I'm sorry, it's merely an unfamiliar sink!") and once she's put it on the kitchen's stove, begins rummaging around in the cupboards for tray things. The baby stares balefully at Thomas through enormous blue eyes, staying remarkably quiet for being unceremoniously foisted onto a stranger. He bounces it nervously.

"Aha!" Sybil produces a rusty biscuit tin from the corner of a shelf and shakes it triumphantly. "You, Sergeant, are a terrible liar. I'll have you know not only is there cold porridge back here, but also stale biscuits!" Stale though they may be, she puts a few on a plate with a saucer of milk and a handful of sugar cubes, and sets the plate on the bar.

"Er," Thomas says, glancing sideways at the baby, who doesn't seem to blink with any regularity, "So, how is… uh…" Sybil looks over at him, and he holds the baby up with an apologetic shrug. She gives him another annoying grin.

"Seer-sha," she says happily, as if that's supposed to be a real Christian name, "is perfectly well. She's lovely; absolutely splendid, really. Although she's getting quite fat, as you can tell." She gently lifts the baby (whose gender at least he now knows) off him and gestures for them both to take seats.

"So, how are you, Thomas?" she asks warmly. He grimaces.

"Nah, me first, if you don't mind," he says. It's rude and unfair and he knows it, but what use has he for pleasantries anymore? "What are you doing here? How do you even know where here is?" Sybil purses her lips. The baby coos in her arms, twisting tiny fingers around a bit of her dress.

"Well, as to the first question, Tom and I are staying in a hotel in York for a few days," she answers. "He's looking for work, and with any luck, a decent flat. We must accept that we won't be returning to Dublin for a while yet, and staying at Downton much longer won't be agreeable for _anyone_ involved.

"As to the second, I asked Mrs. Hughes and she knew about this place. I'm not certain how, I tried talking to Mrs. O'Brien but… it seems you two have had a falling-out."

'You could call it that," Thomas says, closing the matter. The kettle whistles, and ignoring her protests he gets up and pours a cuppa for them both. Sybil takes a biscuit and dunks it in her tea eagerly.

"Not very ladylike, that," he notes, watching. She just barely restrains from rolling her eyes.

"One more bad habit I suppose I've picked up from Tom."

"He doesn't know you're here, does he?" Thomas guesses. "Wouldn't approve of his little wife taking tea in a pub with the likes of me." This time she really does roll her eyes.

"If he ever tries to dictate with whom I am allowed to take tea then I shall divorce him," she says lightly. "As a matter of fact he doesn't know, not exactly, but that's hardly your concern." Thomas smirks.

"What'd you tell him?" She frowns.

"The truth, of course. That I was going to call on an old friend and show off my daughter. Here, now." She gives the little girl a small poke in the belly, prompting her to look up and pay attention to the two adults.

"Give Mummy a smile now, dearest," Sybil murmurs. "Just a little one, please, my love." The baby does not comply, and instead returns to munching on her toes with a solemn expression. Thomas can't help himself; he snorts.

"But your husband wouldn't like it if he knew your old friend was me, though, would he now?"

"Oh, no. He's never much liked you," Sybil replies without a hint of shame. She's still jostling the baby on her knee, no doubt hoping for some sort of precious reaction.

"The feeling's mutual." Sybil's head snaps up.

"But now you see," she says archly, "we've strayed away from the point. I came to find out how you are, Thomas. After all that's happened."

"Yeah, well, how much do _you_ know about what's happened?" he snarls. She doesn't take the bait.

"Oh, very nearly everything. I suppose I have something about me that invites confidence." He chuckles, albeit in spite of himself.

"Don't I know it." They are silent for a while, allowing the clatter of the tea things and the baby's gentle noises to fill in the blanks in his story. He can see in her face that she really does know everything, and also that she doesn't plan on communicating it unless he wants her too.

"You mustn't think," she begins cautiously, after finishing the final biscuit, "that I look at you any differently in light of this. You were my friend in the war, Thomas. That is all I ever need know about you."

"Maybe," he replies, "but the plain fact is whether you need to or not you _do_ know about me. You know more than you should. You always have."

"Perhaps I know what it's like not to be allowed to love someone you cannot help but love," she retorts. His response to that is cold silence and she retreats slightly, as if she realizes that wasn't the right thing to say at all. They are quiet again.

"Well at any rate," Sybil finally speaks, as damn polite and cheerful as ever. It's one of the indelible marks of her upbringing that has endured through the last few years of thorough retraining, this ability to give everything a good public face. He'd never admit it, but Thomas envies her that. "I shan't tell anyone. That's a promise." His smile is bitter and rueful.

"Not even that husband of yours?"

"Of course not," she answers indignantly. "And I won't let anyone else tell him either. Tom is…" she turns a touch dreamy, and Thomas feels rather ill. "You wouldn't think it, but Tom is actually terribly Catholic about these things. No, he'll never know." Thomas sighs, stands, and starts clearing the table.

"That's something, I guess." Sybil stands too; she's balancing that baby on her hip again and she doesn't look like a lady at all, in her neat plain dress and felt hat. She looks like anyone's mother, care etched in faint lines around her full mouth and warm softness in the curves of her hips and breasts. For a moment he thinks he might see what everyone else sees in Lady Sybil Crawley Branson: not the fiery nurse with whom he shared a fag after amputations and raged over the senseless death of Lieutenant Courtenay, but a beautiful, desirable young woman. He doesn't want her, but he almost begins to wish he did.

"Tell me you'll be alright," she says, closing her hand around his upper arm. Thomas doesn't flinch away from her touch. It strikes him that she genuinely is concerned, a courtesy he has long since stopped expecting.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll get by." It isn't much, but he's felt too much in her presence already, and he's pretty sure she understands, even if she isn't quite satisfied.

"Good. Good. That's all... I should be going, then," Sybil hesitates, as if waiting for him to say something else. He doesn't. She gives him a final smile and sways towards the door with the awkward walk of a woman carrying something heavy. Thomas glares when he sees that something heavy gaze back at him with those unnerving blue eyes.

"Oi, Nurse!" he calls. She spares him a glance over her shoulder. "You'll, ah, write me a few sappy letters once you've settled in, I reckon?" Sybil raises a brow and lets the door swing shut behind her.

Over the years he will indeed get one or two letters, in which he will learn three things: that Saoirse is actually spelled in some silly Irish fashion, that Sybil really never will reveal his secret to anyone, and that sometimes friendship, like love, doesn't really give a body any choice in the matter.


End file.
